What's the public to make of the exercise in political theater known as the State of the Union Address and the media's morning-after tea leaf-reading? And why aren't more journalists up in arms about a law that muzzles them as well as convicts?

We'll talk about Coverage of the recent state visit from Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, the desaparacidos and the nature of violence in Mexico. Plus: What high-profile criticisms of the movie 'Selma' say about the critics.

We're told the recent midterm elections were the "most expensive in US history," but who was buying? And what do they expect in return? And what does it all mean for the relatively unmoneyed, namely most of us? We talked with Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen, about the 114th Congress.

Also on the show: A reairing of an interview from July 2014 with Chicago journalist and activist Jamie Kalven about adding information to the story of police policy.

FAIR survey finds torturers well-represented on TV news

A new FAIR study finds that torture defenders outnumbered critics of torture by nearly 2 to 1 in TV news coverage of the Senate Intelligence Committee report released on December 9. FAIR surveyed the guests of nine news programs for the week of December 7 to December 14, when discussion of the torture report’s findings was most prominent. The programs included the Sunday talk shows (NBC's Meet the Press, CBS's Face the Nation, ABC's This Week, Fox News Sunday and CNN’s State of the Union) along with four weekday news shows (MSNBC's Hardball, Fox's Special Report, the first hour of […]

Each week CounterSpin brings you a look behind the headlines of the mainstream news. At year's end we take a look back and revisit some of the stories it's been our privilege and pleasure to bring you. We call it "best of," but the truth is we always work to shine a light on angles or perspectives on events we think you might not hear elsewhere ,and insights into why and how corporate media coverage comes to look the way it does.

Describing them as 'missing' is missing the context

The majority of English-language news accounts have failed to provide a deeper context concerning the failed war on drugs and the use of forced disappearances as a repressive state tactic, and employ language that often criminalizes the disappeared students.

This week on CounterSpin, what does the CIA torture report say about torture--and about us? We'll talk with Rebecca Gordon, author of the book Mainstreaming Torture, about the big questions we should be asking.

Also this week: When you read or hear about pensions in the corporate media, one thing comes through loud and clear: There's no money to pay for workers' retirement. We'll talk to journalist David Sirota, who's been reporting a different pension story altogether--one about how Wall Street investors and hedge fund managers see public pension plans as cash cows.